


Providence

by SiderealMessenger



Series: Providence [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M, Older Characters, human form Bill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4310655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderealMessenger/pseuds/SiderealMessenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Bill Cipher takes over Gravity Falls, he has a change of...well, if not heart, at least mind. So he calls a do-over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fall of Gravity Falls

**Author's Note:**

> Original title: "Bill and Dipper's Equilateral Adventures"  
> Interestingly enough, the idea for this fic came to me in a dream...

The world was burning. Well, Dipper Pines’ world was burning. _Gravity Falls_ was burning.

Bill Cipher had won. 

The demon had been more insidious than even Dipper had given him credit for. He had gone after the people of Gravity Falls one by one, not with violence or overawing demonstrations of powerful magic, but with that damnably persuasive, metaphorically forked tongue of his. Like a true demon, he had made deals. And everyone in Gravity Falls had something they wanted – or more often, something they feared. 

When they accepted Bill’s deals, as they all invariably did, they were Bill’s – mind, body and soul. His puppets. 

If Bill’s efforts could be compared to knitting a sweater, Mabel had been a snag. She was even more stubborn than Dipper, and too smart to think that accepting one of Bill’s deals would lead to anything good. But ultimately, Bill knew that Mabel and Dipper’s greatest strength was also their greatest weakness: each other. And Mabel had at last given in. Her condition: “Save Dipper.” 

Which Bill had happily done. He _had_ saved Dipper. For last. 

Now, Dipper and the demon (dressed, in black slacks, a yellow waistcoat and jacket with long coattails, and a small black top hat and bowtie, as if he were about to go out for a party) stood face to face – or rather, face to chest, as Bill was quite tall when he wasn’t being a two-foot high equilateral triangle. And Bill had offered him a deal. 

“How about I put you out of your misery, Pine Tree?” Bill said amicably, with a too-wide grin. 

Dipper recalled first Wendy, then Soos and Grunkle Stan, then his twin sister staring at him blankly with yellow, slitted eyes, then their faces splitting into grins just like the one he was met with now. He remembered how he had screamed, and tried to shake them out of it, and how they had laughed when he did. 

That laughter had not been so loud and sharp as he remembered it now, and he recognized the artificial burn of Bill’s foreign influence in his head. Bill Cipher was, after all, a demon of the mind, and thoughts and memories were well within his domain. His specialization in dreams was not to be mistaken for a limitation by anyone who wished to survive his company.

Perhaps this was all just a nightmare. Dipper didn’t know the extent of Bill’s powers, but he knew from experience that Bill was capable of causing vivid nightmares and hallucinations. What Dipper also knew, however, was his own wishful thinking, and the edge in Bill’s grin and the cold, clenching at the bottom of Dipper’s stomach told him the past few days had been all too real. 

There was no way out. Everyone in Gravity Falls was under Bill’s control, and there was no one outside of Gravity Falls who would even remotely be able to help. Dipper had spent all afternoon holed up in the attic of the Mystery Shack trying to come up with a plan to save everyone, or at least one person, but he was alone and scared and desperate, and in some deep, dark part of his mind he knew that he had already lost. 

That was when Dipper had heard the doorbell. The doorbell that couldn’t be heard from the attic. A second later, Bill had strode through the barricaded door in a haze of blue light. 

“So whadd’ya say, Pine Tree?” he was saying now. “Do we have a deal?”

“You’re a vile creature and I hate you,” Dipper said, with the kind of fearlessness only gained from hopelessness.

Bill had bent at the hips to lean over Dipper, and their faces were quite close now. Bill closed the remaining inches to place a kiss – mockingly chaste – at the corner of Dipper’s mouth. It nevertheless made Dipper’s skin tingle. Bill did not need to take anything from Dipper – he knew Dipper’s mind. All he had to do was make the offer – a way out – and wait. 

“I feel the same,” Bill breathed, and still his voice echoed into other worlds. “So do we. Have. A deal?”

Dipper looked up into that single golden eye (the other was covered by an elaborate patch that closely resembled the demon’s triangular form), and the scent of ancient ruins and even more ancient deserts hung dry in the air. If he let the demon in, it would mean letting himself go. Whatever happened to his mind and consciousness after that, there would be no thoughts of Gravity Falls, and perhaps if he was lucky, no thoughts at all.

His will hardening, Dipper grabbed Bill roughly by his lapels and kissed him angrily, passionately and despairingly, and he felt Bill’s grin widen. There was a flash of blue light, and then—

** △ **

Bill Cipher was bored. 

The idea of having his very own meat puppet town had sounded like a great one at the time. Lots of fun! Just seeing Pine Tree slam his hand in a drawer twenty consecutive times would surely be well worth the effort. 

But now that he’d accomplished it, and a few weeks had passed, the novelty had worn off. Humans were such tricky creatures, and remembering to make each one eat, drink, wash and use the toilet on a regular schedule alone was difficult enough without trying to have any fun. He had already lost four of them to dehydration, and one to only half paying attention while he was actively controlling the guy and walking him off a cliff. Micromanaging an entire town was hard, and Bill was bored. 

He had always thought of Gravity Falls as his, anyway. (Because it was.) Controlling everyone in it just made everything less interesting, particularly the Mystery Twins, who had seemed so interesting in the first place because they were _not_ his, and therefore came with a little more, well, _mystery_. 

Bill had no designs upon the rest of the world – at least, not for the foreseeable future (and he could foresee quite a bit of several futures if he tried). It would involve stepping on too many other demons’ and deities’ toes to be anything more than unpleasant, and what was the rest of the world but one really big town? Everything Bill wanted was in Gravity Falls (or on entirely different planes of existence), but suddenly he didn’t want them anymore – not now that he could simply reach out and take them and no one would try to stop him, or call him evil, or even just offer a polite objection. It was so easy, it wasn’t worth doing. 

So, Bill decided, having accidentally (on purpose) made Lazy Susan trip headfirst into a running wood chipper during his deliberations, the time had come to bring some mystery back to Gravity Falls. 

With an entirely unnecessary snap of his fingers, Bill Cipher rewrote a bit of history.


	2. A Second Chance at a First Impression

What Bill had done, in detail, was rewind the past few weeks, and erase all memory of himself from everyone in Gravity Falls. He felt they all needed a fresh start with one another. Perhaps he had gotten off on the wrong foot with the Mystery Twins in particular. Having removed them from the picture once, he realized they had more potential than he had at first thought. They were irritating enemies, and might make very interesting friends indeed.

He found Pine Tree where he had expected to find Pine Tree: running around in the woods chasing after monsters and magic. The kid really hadn’t changed much in the five years since he'd started coming to this town. Bill almost admired his persistence. Pine Tree never seemed to get bored of it all.

When Dipper rounded the next corner, Bill was there, legs crossed, floating in the center of the path. “Hiya, kid!” he said. 

Dipper stared at the snappily-dressed triangle, dumbfounded. He managed to give a weak wave.

Bill, who had never quite grasped what counted as a good first impression among humans, said “Look what I can do!” and pulled his deer teeth trick.

Dipper proceeded to look horrified. 

Which, Bill thought, meant he was off to a pretty good start. Next, he changed to his human form. "What do you think, does this look make me seem more approachable? Relatable?" he asked off-handedly. "I get a lot of not-so-positive feedback about my relatability." 

Dipper found the creature's new form nearly as alien as its previous, triangular one. While Dipper supposed it was  _supposed_ to look human, the proportions were too perfect, almost geometric, and the slitted golden eye and two-toned blonde and black hair certainly weren't marks in the 'human' column. Plus, the guy was way overdressed for a stroll in the woods.

“W-What are you?” Dipper asked when he was finally able to speak.

“I’ll give you a hint,” the previous-floating-triangle-now-ridiculously-overdressed-man-with-a-triangular-eyepatch said. “It starts with D - E - M - O and ends with N.”

_ " Jesus _ _Christ!_ " Dipper hissed, backing up. 

"Language, kid," the demon scolded. "Unless that was a guess!" it cried, and doubled over with laughter. "In which case I'm also going to assume you can't spell." 

"Er, sorry..." Dipper tried. "Y-you’re seriously a demon?” he asked, half alarmed, half intrigued. (This left no room for skepticism, but he was, after all, Dipper Pines. In his view, things were probably true unless proven false.)

“On the money, kid!” the demon said, throwing up its hands and, in the process, shooting a stream of hundred-dollar bills out of its sleeves like the two of them were in a spontaneous ad for a Vegas casino. 

Before the bills hit the ground, however, they caught bright blue flame, and turned to ash as they fluttered down. 

“But I’m a nice demon,” the demon said with a distinctly not-nice grin. “The name’s Bill Cipher. And don’t believe a word you read about me in those dusty old journal of yours. That guy had it in for me.”

“A nice demon?” Dipper asked, finally starting to get skeptical. 

“HAHA you got me there, kid,” Bill said, shrugging guiltily. “I _did_ just come from a timeline where I enslaved all of Gravity Falls to my will. You were a great kisser by the way. But I decided all that was a mistake, so I called a do-over, and now everyone’s just fine, and I’ve decided to be nice. Maybe even one of the good guys!”

“Like you _decided_ to take over the town,” Dipper said, still not entirely sure whether to believe a word this guy was saying. And what was that middle part?

“Exactly!” said the dapper demon. “So, whadd’ya say? Wanna be friends? On the same team? I’ll tell ya now, I’m a good guy to have on your side, and as an enemy, I'm a real nightmare." The demon laughed at some inside joke. "I'm not asking for anything formal, not a strict _deal_. Just a…gentlemen’s agreement. If I make one wrong move, you have every right to give me the nastiest glares you can muster while knowing anything you try to do to stop me will be utterly futile.”

“You make it sound like you’re just going to do what you want either way. And besides, I’m not sure I want you hanging around here with Mabel.” However curious Dipper was about this demon, he put nothing above his sister’s safety.

“Aw, that’s sweet. But your sister seems like she can take care of herself,” Bill said. “And I know you’re tempted. I've got a lot to offer, Pine Tree.” He grinned that knife’s blade grin again. 

“You’ve seen Mabel?!” Dipper demanded, ignoring the rest.

“Of course I have,” Bill said. “Now that doesn’t mean _she’s_ seen _me_ …”

“You stay away from my sister, demon!” Dipper tried for his best authoritative voice.

“Wow, scathing,” Bill commented drily. “Is that the best you can do? That’s like me calling you ‘human’ as an insult. Wait – it is an insult! AHAHAHAHA humans are stupid.”

Dipper decided to ignore that, too. “You mentioned the journals. Can you tell me more about them?”

“Suuuuuuure,” Bill said, hooking his thumbs in his lapels and rocking back on his heels. “I know aaaall about them.”

Dipper thought, despite his teasing tone, that Bill was being genuine. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be your friend, or whatever. For now. Just don’t go near Mabel, and don’t hurt anyone or cause any trouble.”

“You got it, kid,” Bill agreed. Pine Tree hadn’t said anything about Shooting Star’s dreams…  

“You mentioned another thing, about me, in that other timeline…” Dipper trailed off uncomfortably. 

“Yes?” Bill said, unhelpfully. 

“You know…” Dipper said, really hoping Bill would take the hint and not make him say it aloud.

“I know lots of things, Pine Tree. You’re going to have to be more specific.” Bill’s smile revealed his flat-out lie.

“Whatever!” Dipper said, exasperated. “I don’t care anymore.”

“To answer your poorly articulated question, Pine Tree, yes. We really did kiss. And while enthusiasm was not required to seal the deal – nor was tongue, might I add – you sure went for it! Gave me goosebumps. I had no idea you had it in you, kid.”

Now Dipper looked absolutely mortified, and his cheeks had turned a very appealing shade of pink. Bill loved it when humans blushed – it made all that blood they kept inside that much more visible. 

“Diiiiiiperrrrrrr!” came Mabel’s voice through the trees from close by. 

Too late, Dipper remembered his request of the demon. “Wait! Mabel, don't–“ he yelled.

But Mabel bounded into the clearing towards him, and when he turned back to where Bill had been floating, there was no one there. 

“Hello?” Mabel said. “I’m over here, silly.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry, Sis.” Dipper said distractedly. 

“Did I interrupt something?” Mabel asked, scrutinizing her brother, who was behaving oddly even by her brother’s standards. And why was he blushing?

“No!” Dipper said, a little too quickly. “Let’s go back to the Shack. I think I’m all adventured out for the day.”

The twins started off on the long trek home and Bill, who had never truly left but had merely retreated to a safe distance, chuckled. 

** △ **

Somewhere on the edge of what passed as downtown Gravity Falls, inside an old building that looked like a church but wasn’t, a group of figures in gold, hooded robes discussed a serious matter in hushed voices around a long table. Engraved in the center of the table was a triangle with a single eye at its center.


	3. Making Friends is Scary

Dipper was incredibly confused. He had just met what he believed was a demon (one that had admitted as much), and, despite its...eccentricities, it did seem to be...somewhat...nice? Was that the right word? Or if not that, at least not obviously malicious. And yet, there was the name, Bill Cipher, next to a clear drawing of that triangle with its single eye staring back at Dipper from its dedicated page in Journal #3 (after taking Journal #2 from Gideon, Dipper had never been able to find Journal #1, try as he might). A page that Dipper was surprised he had ever forgotten about. A page that was splashed with what may have been blood, and that read, "CAN'T BE REAL. DO NOT SUMMON AT ALL COSTS!" (There was also a section that read, in the Author's handwriting, "Bill has proven himself to be one of the friendliest and most trustworthy individuals that I've ever encountered in my life. What a guy! I honestly can't trust him more. Not evil in any way, Bill is a true gentleman." But that had been furiously crossed out, and the Author had written beneath it, "Can't Be Trusted!" Dipper could guess what had happened there.)

But Dipper _hadn't_ summoned the demon. It had come to Dipper of its own free will. He didn't know whether that was better or worse. He was only certain of two things: one, he needed to learn more about Bill Cipher before their next encounter, and two, he could not keep this secret from his sister for long. He certainly would if he could, for her sake, but Mabel was as shrewd a detective as he, and she had an even more uncanny ability to Notice Things.

Dipper and Mabel had finally gotten separate rooms in the Mystery Shack when they turned sixteen (thankfully with no more embarrassing body swapping incidents), and Dipper had kept the attic. He stayed up late that night researching. As he lay down on his bed with the two journals and his laptop, he noticed for what felt – oddly – like the first and thousandth time, the unusual design of the attic window: a single eye inscribed in a large triangle. Now that he thought about it, there were signs of the demon all over town, but for some reason he was only putting the pieces together now...

He got what he could out of the journals and their author's frantic and half scratched-out handwriting. Bill Cipher was a dream demon that usually inhabited a place called the Mindscape, where it was possible to influence dreams, memories and perhaps even thoughts. As terrifying as beings with power in the Mindscape sounded, most of the plane's inhabitants were at least unable to affect the physical plane. Bill, however, was an exception to the rule. He could easily cross between planes, or even partially project himself in several at once. According to the Author, the Mindscape was not merely Bill's home, but his domain. He didn't often involve himself in the affairs of humans, but when he did, it was best to get as far out of the blast radius as possible. In short, this Bill Cipher was a big fish. In fact, if Dipper were to continue with the fish metaphor, he'd say Bill was a shark. Probably the one from  _Jaws_.

Dipper could find no direct reference to a demon called Bill Cipher online. In his triangle form, Bill resembled to an uncanny degree the All-Seeing Eye, or the Eye of Providence, but that symbol was generally a positive one, representing the eye of God watching over man, or divine providence. The Illuminati, probably the most famous adopters of the symbol, were (at least on the record) just an Enlightenment society dedicated to shining a light on political corruption and combatting superstition and fanaticism. Nothing harmful there. Either it was very rare indeed for Bill to involve himself with humans, or he was very good at covering his tracks. (Dipper felt safe ruling out the possibility that Bill was actually the eye of God, or that he had anything to do with God, righteousness or virtue in any way. Crazy though the Author sometimes seemed, he or she had never been wrong, which meant Bill was very dangerous, and not to be trusted.)

Dipper fell asleep with his face on the keyboard. He dreamed.

_He was on his bed in the attic of the Mystery Shack, but everything was black and white, and blurred around the edges. His mind felt hazy. Slowly, he sat up and put his feet on the floor. When he stood, the floor felt solid enough, but he could just make out the shape of the hallway below through the translucent floorboards._

_He noticed an owl with the strangest golden, slitted eyes perched on the windowsill below the eye of the triangle design, watching him. Those eyes were the only color that he could see in this place. The owl opened its beak, but what came out was the sound of the Mystery Shack's doorbell._

_"Um. Come in?" Dipper tried, half speaking to the air, half to the owl._

_The owl ruffled its feathers, and then became — or always was — Bill Cipher sitting on the windowsill, one long leg crossed leisurely over the other, one golden, slitted eye looking over Dipper appraisingly. Though he now appeared in his human form, there was a faint, triangular halo just visible around his head._

_"Don't mind if I do," he said, and his voice echoed ethereally here even more than it had in the waking world. "Fancy meeting you here, Pine Tree."_

_Dipper still wasn't sure how he felt about the nickname, but he wasn't stupid enough to object. "This is the Mindscape, isn't it?" he said instead._

_Bill whistled. "Impressive. How did you know?"_

_"I did my research," Dipper said. He felt it was safest to answer the demon's questions with as little information as possible._

_"In those journals of yours," Bill finished for him._

_Dipper cursed in his head. If this was the Mindscape, then his thoughts were probably on display up in bright lights for anyone who knew how to read them._

_Bill laughed, proving Dipper right. "Where do you keep them by the way?"_

_For an instant Dipper tried very hard not to think of the secret compartment he'd built under his bed, but then he remembered the challenge of not thinking about a white elephant when told not to think about a white elephant, and he began to think very hard about white elephants instead. He hoped he'd been fast enough._

_"I'm not going to tell you that," Dipper said._

_"Why not?" Bill asked curiously._

_"Because you'll try to destroy them."_

_Bill looked surprised. "And why would I do that?"_

_"Because you—" Dipper began, but realized he hadn't really known where that sentence was going. He had a strange sense of déjà vu. "I don't know, exactly. But I don't trust you yet."_

_"Right... Trust is that thing you're supposed to earn." Bill shrugged. "You humans sure are particular."_

_Dipper was nervous about meeting this demon in his own realm, but he_ should _have been terrified. Something about Bill really made it seem like he didn't mean any harm. At least—not yet._

 _Bill grinned. "So you_ do _trust me! Just a bit." He held up his black-gloved thumb and forefinger in front of his eye to illustrate "a bit."_

_Dipper smacked his forehead, wishing he had more control over his thoughts. There was no use lying in this place. He hoped he would wake up soon. "Why aren't I dreaming like usual?" he asked._

_"Dreams are like stage sets in the Mindscape," Bill said. "I stopped your stage from being set, so you could walk right off."_

_Dipper looked around again. Both suddenly and gradually, the Mystery Shack had shifted to become a large, dark wood tumbling out in all directions. Bill was now sitting on a low branch._

_"Welcome to the backstage tour, kid," he said, holding out his arms dramatically._

_Dipper felt as though he should clap, but he stopped himself. He suspected the sudden urge had been a mental suggestion of Bill's._

_"Why are you letting me see this?" Dipper asked. Just because Bill didn't seem overtly malicious at present, that didn't mean Dipper believed he was brimming with goodwill and charity._

_"Ever wonder why people warn you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?" Bill asked casually._

_Dipper thought he got the idea and began, cautiously, to apologize, but Bill snapped his fingers and a huge, nightmarish black horse appeared right in front of Dipper. Its mane and eyes dripped black oil, and its hooves were as sharp and pointed as claws. Its whinny sounded more like a growl._

_"That's a gift horse," Bill said. He tapped its rump with his newly-acquired-out-of-thin-air cane twice in succession. "Say 'aaah'."_

_The horse opened its mouth inches from Dipper's face to reveal several rows of teeth like spines. Dipper froze._

_Bill snapped his fingers again and the horse disappeared. He burst into laughter, nearly falling off his branch. "You should have seen your face, kid! Priceless! I was kidding of course — I just made that up."_

_Dipper waited patiently for his heart to cease its enthusiastic impression of a battering ram. "Th-then why? Not that I don't appreciate it," he added quickly, in case Bill brought the gift horse back again._

_"Because we're friends, remember? I just thought you'd want to know that, as your friend, I can give you access to the Mindscape at any time. With a little training, you can do anything you can think of here. Of course,_ I _can do_ more _than you can think of, but the Mindscape and I are practically one and the same. Anyway, it should at least be useful for your 'research'." Bill smirked._

_"Uh...yeah. Thank you," Dipper said, now entirely unsure what to think._

_"Well?" Bill said, hopping down from his branch and never quite landing on the ground. "Do you want to go exploring or not?"_

_Dipper really had nothing to say. Dumbly (in both senses of the word, he reflected), he followed Bill deeper into the woods, and the canopy became the arches of an old, gothic castle around them. Dipper thought he heard a dragon roar high above, but it might just as easily have been his mind playing tricks on him._

_The hooded figure that had been observing the two of them from behind one of the trees-turned-columns, vanished._

** △ **

Dipper awoke with a start from the fading memory of being pushed off a cliff with the words "Rise and shine, kiddo!" yelled cheerily after him. His face hurt, but he wasn't sure whether it was from hitting the ground in his dream, or the impression of his keyboard it was currently sporting. Probably both. Had it all been just a dream...?

He brought his laptop screen back to life to find that his ongoing research document on Bill Cipher trailed off in the middle of a sentence into a long stream of chaotic keysmashing from when he'd fallen asleep on the keyboard. Except for the last line, twenty pages later, which read, "ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffvvvvvvvvvkkhopeyoulikedthedragon-bill."


	4. Confession

Dipper’s time in the Mindscape was coming back to him quickly, now. And he had, very much in fact, liked the dragon. After his initial terror and several assurances on Bill’s part that it wasn’t about to char broil and eat him, of course. Although Bill was also quick to point out that without his protection, there were many creatures in the Mindscape that would do worse to a soul wandering outside the haven of its dreams, which would cause great and irreparable damage to the mind in the waking world, and likely result in a fate worse than (though certainly not excluding) death.

Bill had also begun teaching Dipper some basic skills, starting with how to conjure an object out of thin air with a thought. (Dipper would only be able to do this in the Mindscape of course.) It required a special kind of thinking that was really quite natural once you understood the idea behind it. If you wanted to produce a dagger from the thought of a dagger, it wasn’t a singular, laser-like focus on imagining a dagger that brought the dagger to life. The Mindscape was not a computer that required complete and exact commands. Dipper knew what the dagger he wanted was like, so the Mindscape knew as well. All he had to do was relax, and let the thought of his dagger surface in all its complexity and contradiction, just get the shape—the _idea_ of it, and the Mindscape would fill in the rest, just like it constructed dreams that were as convincing as reality as long as the dreamer remained in the Mindscape. 

Dipper produced a silver dagger on his second try. “Not bad for a novice with no magical ability,” Bill had said. “Now make a volcano.” 

And, by the end of it, Dipper had.  Waking up had been just a little bit disappointing. 

He yawned, stretched out several dozen kinks from his ungodly sleeping position as best he could, and padded down the stairs in his socks for breakfast. He groaned as a previously undiscovered twinge in his left leg, which had somehow found its way atop his headboard while he’d slept, made itself suddenly and insistently known on the last step.  

“AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE AND WALK AMONG THE LIVING,” Mabel boomed at him in her best Doomsday prophet voice as he shuffled over to the table. 

“You left out the part where the dead feast on the living’s brains like canned tuna,” Dipper said. 

“The dead can  _try_ ,” Mabel countered. 

“Mabel, be nice to your zombie brother,” Grunkle Stan cut in from behind the Sunday paper. 

Dipper sat down with a bowl of cereal. “I wasn’t up _that_ late,” he grumbled into his bowl. 

“I heard a book hit the attic floor at three in the morning,” Mabel said. 

Dipper had nearly tripped over the journal lying on the floor when he’d gotten out of bed. It must have slipped off the bed sometime after he’d fallen asleep.

“You were up even later than me?” Dipper said disbelievingly. “How do you still have so much energy?”

Mabel slammed a tall, cold glass of Mabel Juice down in front of him. She had started eating a little more sensibly since she no longer had the bulletproof stomach lining and the wildfire metabolism of adolescence, but no power in Heaven, Hell, Earth or Gravity Falls could convince her to give up Mabel Juice. 

Dipper eyed a yellow pteranodon floating at the top of the pink, sparkly drink, then closed his eyes and chugged it, leaving the plastic dinosaurs and pterosaurs at the bottom. He immediately felt more awake. And immediately nauseous. 

“Thanks,” he wheezed. 

“Any time, Brobro,” Mabel said sunnily, patting him on the back.

To Dipper’s horror, he coughed up glitter. 

** △ **

Noon found the twins with a picnic of sandwiches on the back porch. Grunkle Stan had taken Soos into town with him on an errand of dubious legality, and not even he made Wendy work on a Sunday. It was just the two of them, the empty Mystery Shack, and the endless forest. 

“So,” Mabel said, with so much fake innocence it sounded downright evil, “what are you researching this time?”

Dipper had probably put this off as long as he could. But where, even, to start?

“Do you believe in demons, Mabel?” he asked, after a few seconds of silence. 

Mabel frowned at him, but gave the question serious thought. “Are we talking the ‘torture your soul while you burn in Hell for your sins for all eternity’ kind, or the ‘things we don’t know much about so we fear them and call them demons’ kind?” she asked. 

“I think…more of the second. I hope,” Dipper said. 

“Then of course I do,” Mabel replied. “Why?”

“Because I met one. And I think we might be…friends.”

** △ **

The Mindscape was behaving strangely of late. At times it was just the slightest bit sluggish and unresponsive, and then everything would appear to return to normal. Last night the effect had been the strongest Bill had felt it, and it was a miracle Pine Tree had been able to do what he had. Of course, Bill didn’t let how impressed he was with the kid show. That would have been much too… _sentimental_. Besides, he had more important things to worry about. He had to figure out what was happening to the Mindscape and fix it before it got any worse. 

Because it was a two-way link. Bill ruled the Mindscape. And in a not insignificant way, the Mindscape, the source of his power, ruled him. 


	5. Charm

Even now, Dipper didn’t tell Mabel _everything_. Like how Bill claimed he had just rewound several weeks of time in which he had taken control of Gravity Falls one person at a time, accidentally killing a few and intentionally killing a few more. And how for whatever stupid reason, Dipper’s deal with the demon had to be sealed with a kiss. He wasn’t even sure any of that was true! And even if it was, technically, none of it ever really happened. So Mabel really didn’t need to know!

Of course, Mabel had demanded to meet this Bill Cipher immediately to determine for herself just what kind of influence he was having on her brother. Dipper foresaw bloodshed if Mabel didn’t approve, and it just might be Bill’s. 

Dipper wasn’t sure if this would work, but he called out Bill’s name, thinking it even louder as he did so. Perhaps he _should_ have looked into how to summon the demon. Then again, perhaps not. He suspected Bill wouldn’t take too kindly to being _summoned_. 

Bill Cipher did not appear. Not even a stir in the air or a tug at Dipper’s mind. Either he couldn’t hear, wasn’t listening, or—

“Bill!” Dipper yelled to the air. “Stop being a smartass! You can come near Mabel when I ask you to!”

Dipper had scarcely finished his sentence when Bill appeared sitting cross-legged between them on the deck. Dipper couldn’t help but notice that the way in which the three of them were now sitting formed a triangle. 

“Well why didn’t you say so, Pine Tree?” Bill said. He held out his black-gloved hand to a surprised Mabel. “Bill Cipher. Pleased to finally meet you, Shooting Star. I’ve heard _so_ much about you.”

Mabel looked hesitantly down at Bill’s hand, which was wreathed in blue flames. 

“Whoops!” Bill said, pulling his hand back, shaking out the flames and re-offering it. “Force of habit.”

Mabel cautiously shook his hand. “Are you after my brother’s soul?” she asked frankly. 

Bill blinked. “Why would I want that?”

“I thought demons traded in souls, or ate them or something,” Mabel said. 

“HAHA! Oh man, is that what that Bible thing says? Listen, _bodies_ are sometimes useful on this plane, but a soul, if that’s what you want to call it, is just the cosmic junk you need to chuck out before you can possess one. And as for what I eat, I’m a dream demon. I eat nightmares.”

Dipper shivered. He found himself doing that a lot around Bill. 

“That’s…good,” Mabel said. “Because that means when you’re around, there aren’t any nightmares.”

Bill laughed again, but this time it was different. A little bit warmer. “Well you’re just a glass half full of optimism, Shooting Star!” he said. 

Mabel smiled, but it was guarded. "Are you after my brother's body, then?"

Bill looked contemplative as he raked his eye shamelessly over Dipper. "Well, I wouldn't turn him down."

Dipper turned scarlet, and Mabel rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant," she said.

"I know, I know," Bill said, still grinning. "Pine Tree's just too easy to tease. But I don't need a human vessel to affect things here. I made this one all by myself," he said, patting his chest, "and it's plenty solid. Here, I'll demonstrate." He snagged the other half of Dipper’s sandwich and bit into it.

“Hey!” Dipper objected. “I thought you ate nightmares!”

“This sandwich certainly qualifies,” Bill replied, chewing thoughtfully.

Dipper pulled the remaining half of the sandwich closer to him, protectively. “I made these myself.”

Bill turned to look at Mabel. “I’m so sorry,” he said. "If you want, I can make the rest disappear when Pine Tree's not looking."

"I'm right here!" Dipper complained.

And Mabel laughed. 

** △ **

Dipper was quite surprised to learn that Bill Cipher had Charm. It was just the right mixture of affected human civility and his genuine morbid creepiness and terrible sense of a practical joke to make him surprisingly endearing and almost pleasant to talk to. At the end of it, Mabel had even given him one of her Seals of Approval – an actual rubber toy seal with a ribbon around its neck on which she’d written “APPROVAL” in glitter glue – before going inside so they could “do their cute friendship thing.” 

Dipper suspected she was now watching them with binoculars through one of the windows. She got understandably quite excited whenever Dipper made a new friend, as the occurrence was as rare as some astronomical events, and she was never quick to dismiss one. Even, apparently, if that friend happened to be a powerful and dangerous dream demon. 

“I am a being of pure energy,” Bill commented, “and I don’t think I have any left after talking to that girl for two hours. How do you live with that…hurricane?” Bill looked down at his new toy seal in bewilderment. 

“There’s an eye in the storm every so often,” Dipper said. 

Bill’s eye narrowed at the pun at his expense. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say I need your help, Pine Tree, but it may make the resolution of a current problem of mine more expedient.”

“What kind of problem?” Dipper asked suspiciously. 

“Relax, you won’t have to kill anyone. If a person is causing this, I’ll happily take care of that part.”

“Bill!” Dipper objected. 

“There’s something wrong with the Mindscape,” Bill cut him off. “Right now it’s subtle – I just started feeling it yesterday. But if it gets serious, there will be pandemics of night terrors, hyper-emotion, precognition, insanity, you get the picture. Problems with the Mindscape affect everyone, but especially me. I can’t trust myself to be objective with this. But I get the feeling the influence is coming from outside the Mindscape, on this plane. If you turn up anything with your supernatural sleuth routine before I do, I’d owe you a big one.”

“So…you want me to keep an eye out for anything unusual.” The situation did sound serious, but Dipper just couldn’t resist. 

Bill leveled him with his stare. “Yes.” His voice echoed like it did in the Mindscape, and blue flames licked his fingertips.

Dipper quickly threw up his hands. “Alright. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thank you,” Bill said thinly. “I’ll see you tonight.” He did not say anything ridiculous like "be careful." Even if it was...tempting.

“It’s a date,” Dipper said, and he really made poor word choices sometimes. 

“In your dreams, Pine Tree,” Bill chuckled over his shoulder as he turned and disappeared. 


	6. Mabel is Even Crazier Than Usual

“So you actually liked Bill?” Dipper asked, still a bit surprised. He hadn’t realized it until now, but he had been counting on Mabel to be the voice of reason (yes, he realized his mistake now) and say that friendship with the demon was a stupid and dangerous idea. 

“I gave him a Seal of Approval, didn’t I? Rubber seals don’t come cheap these days,” she said. 

“Why?”

“I don’t know, maybe there’s a rubber shortage…”

“No, I mean why do you approve of Bill?” Dipper said. 

“Well, he’s a little…different, but so are we and so is everyone else in this town, and he doesn’t seem like he’s about to go on a murder spree or anything, which is important, don’t get me wrong. But mostly, it’s because you act around him almost the same way you act around me, and I already know _I_ bring out the best in you, so maybe he does, too.” 

“Huh,” Dipper said. He wasn’t sure what else there was to say. 

“Plus, we’re nearly adults now, and I think that means we have to start trusting our own judgements more. And I think your judgement’s pretty trustworthy. Generally. Except for that time with the leprechauns. Or that swamp monster egg. Or—“

“Okay, I get the idea,” Dipper said quickly. Then, more thoughtfully, “Thanks, Mabel.”

“Any time, Brobro,” Mabel smiled. “Although come to think of it, have _you_ ever approved of one of _my_ boyfriends?”

“Your boyfriends have all been either certifiably crazy or doomed to failure,” Dipper said, before he realized what Mabel had done. “Wait– We’re not talking about boyfriends! We’re talking about friends! _Just_ friends!”

“Oh?” Mabel said, and there was that fake innocence again. “I guess you’re right. Could have fooled me, though. Here was little old Mabel, thinking you two had a dream date tonight.”

“You were _listening_ , too?! What are you, the _C.I.A._?” Dipper said, gesticulating wildly. 

“I could be,” Mabel said, deadpan. 

Dipper began to make a frustrated and unintelligible growling noise. 

“ _Relax_ ,” Mabel said, trying not to laugh. “If you just want to be friends with the demon, that’s _totally_ fine. But it didn’t _look_ like you just want to be friends,” she added, more seriously. 

“You do know he’s a triangle, right?” Dipper said, exasperated. “An actual, equilateral triangle. With one eye.” He made a triangle with his index fingers and thumbs over one of his eyes to illustrate his point. 

“I’m sure he wouldn’t be when it counts,” Mabel said, sing-song. 

“Mabel!” Dipper yelled. 

But Mabel was already up and running, laughing as she went. When Dipper finally caught her and tackled her to the ground, they had already forgotten what they had been talking about, and just lay there in the grass, looking up at the clear sky, content. 

** △ **

Dipper lay in bed as the sun set and began to read the journals again front to back to look for anything that could cause harm to the Mindscape. Mabel had insisted on helping with the fieldwork when the time came, but as he was the more research-oriented of the two of them, he was at least able to delay her involvement. They had always gone on dangerous adventures and investigations together, but if a being like Bill needed help (excuse him – would _appreciate_ help to make the resolution of his problem more expedient), this time it could be _very_ dangerous. 

It took him more than five hours to go through the journals again, and much of that time was spent cracking a few more of the Author’s codes that he had previously overlooked. Apart from Bill, who could easily sabotage the Mindscape if he wanted to, there were only a few other candidates that packed enough punch in the right places to pull something like this off. The first was an arcane thought deity called Phlathys, but it dwelt “at the edge of the infinite Mindscape,” which, Dipper thought, was still technically _in_ the Mindscape. Another possibility was the ravens of Odin, Huginn and Muninn, that were vessels of divine thought and memory. But, according to the Author, the ravens had fled with many of the old gods into the Mindscape to feed on the belief of the past when belief in them in the present had faded. 

That left only one candidate outside of the Mindscape. To influence the Mindscape from outside required ritual, and the Gravity Falls chapter of the Illuminati were masters of ritual. The main page on them was brief, and Dipper remembered being surprised to learn, the first time he’d read it, that even the Author had been unable to uncover their mission. All he or she knew was that it was a different mission from the other chapters around the world. And although it would be easy to disguise oneself in one of their hooded golden robes, the Author declared that infiltration was impossible. “They would  know.” 

On the back of the page, however, was more, written in invisible ink: a few lines of code and a map. When Dipper deciphered the code at the top, it said only that their temple was well-defended and impossible to get close to. Dipper scanned his blacklight over the map and found the X marking a building just on the edge of the downtown area that Dipper couldn’t remember ever noticing before. The single line of code at the bottom of the page made Dipper almost certain he had found what he was looking for. It read, “Bill Cipher is involved.”

Like everything the Author had written about the Illuminati, it was vague. But it didn’t make sense that Bill would have anything to do with a cult that threatened the Mindscape. Dipper didn’t want to begin to speculate about what the Author had meant. He would have it straight from the mouth of the demon himself. Damn it, Mabel! If she hadn’t said those crazy things, he would _not_ be thinking about Bill’s mouth right now. He didn’t know where Mabel had gotten the idea. Bill was just…new, and exciting. He was the biggest mystery Dipper had ever come across. And okay, maybe he was _objectively_ good-looking in his human form. Anyone would find him at least a little bit attractive. His looks were sharp, warning of danger even while they drew you in. The curve of his smile really was like the blade of a knife. Aaaand Dipper’s train of thought had come full circle. Great. 

Suddenly, he really wasn’t looking forward to meeting Bill again when he closed his eyes. But he had to sleep sometime, and his sense of survival told him it would not be wise to keep the demon waiting. So he went over the journal page one more time, then put the books back in their hiding place, lay back, and closed his eyes. 

Sleep took him surprisingly quickly. 


	7. In Dipper's Dreams

_ “What took you so long?” Bill asked. He was leaning against a nonexistent wall. As before, he represented the only color in the black and white world.  _

_ “Midnight is early for me,” Dipper said, hesitant to meet the demon’s keen eye.  _

_ Bill scoffed. “You need your sleep, kid. Can’t have you falling asleep on the job.  _ My _ job, might I add.” _

_ “Have you found anything out?” Dipper asked.  _

_ “I,” Bill said, “have had to stay here and slow the progression of this thing through the Mindscape. What about you, Pine Tree? Do you have anything for me?” _

_ When Dipper finally met Bill’s gaze, he realized that the demon seemed just a little bit tense, anxious. Something was straining him. Dipper didn’t need three guesses as to what. He even thought he could feel some of it himself this time. The air felt...thicker, more rigid. If it continued getting worse, it would be suffocating.  _

_ He told Bill about what he’d read in the journals, including the mention of his name.  _

_ “The Gravity Falls Illuminati, huh?” Bill said thoughtfully, twirling his cane slowly. “I wouldn't have thought they could pull off a stunt like this. What’s it going to take to get them off my back, a murder spree? No wait, I’ve done that…” _

_ Dipper was glad Mabel wasn’t here. “Is that why they’re trying to break the Mindscape? Are they going after you?” _

_ “Oh, certainly.”  _

_ The Illuminati around the world all but worshipped Bill, though even they didn’t know much about him. But the Gravity Falls chapter, like everything else in Gravity Falls, had gotten twisted around, and had devoted themselves solely to throwing a wrench into Bill’s plans whenever possible. The fact that of all the chapters, they were based closest to him, and knew him best, did not factor into the matter at all in Bill’s opinion. _

_“We go a looong way back,” Bill said. “But good Mindscapers though they are, they’ve never been what you’d call_ creative _thinkers – those self-righteous fanatical types never are – and they’re still just weak little humans. It takes either a lot of creativity or a lot of raw power to hurt the Mindscape like this, and as long as I’ve known them, they’ve had neither. All they’ve been able to manage so far is to keep me from destroying them for good.”_

_Dipper nearly asked what they had against Bill. Then he asked a question he_ couldn’t _answer himself. “Are they a threat to humans, or just you?”_

_Bill’s eye narrowed. “They’re only_ after _me, but the only way I can be killed is if the Mindscape is destroyed or severely altered. And if that happens,_ everyone _goes down with me.”_

_ “Okay, but do they know that?” _

_ “Those idiots? They wouldn’t know a transdimensional being from a pandimensional one. But I wouldn’t expect them to care much if they did know the consequences of what they’re doing. They started out just trying to protect humans, but recently they haven’t seemed to mind collateral damage in trying to get to me. Now they probably just want to purge my evil from the earth, and if they have to purge the whole earth with me, it’ll be worth it.” _

_If Bill was right, then this cult was too dangerous to be allowed to continue. But they were still human. It wasn’t like they were_ monsters _… No, Dipper knew that wasn’t necessarily true. There were plenty of human monsters in the world, probably more than non-human ones. Still, Dipper had to give them the benefit of the doubt._

_ “Mabel and I will talk to them, tell them what will happen if they keep doing this,” he said.  _

_ Bill laughed. “I can tell you how that’ll go. They’ll ask you how you know, and if you say I told you, they’ll say I’m a lying demon and they won’t believe you. But if you say you got the information any other way, they’ll say it isn’t a legitimate authority on the Mindscape, and they still won’t believe you.” _

_ “I have to try, Bill,” Dipper said, determined.  _

_ The look Bill gave him made Dipper freeze like a deer in the sights of a mountain lion. It was a look of pure, razor-sharp wrath that, if Dipper didn’t know better, he might have called divine. He also knew it mostly wasn’t meant for him, but for the ones who were cornering Bill on his own terrain. That didn’t make it any less terrifying.   _

_ Then Bill leaned back and spun his cane, and the moment shattered. “Suit yourself, Pine Tree. But do it soon. I can’t set foot in their temple anyway – it’s protected.” _

_Dipper exhaled slowly, relieved. “The journal mentioned that. What kind of protection keeps_ you _out?”_

_ “The place has two layers of defense. The outer one isn’t meant for me – I could get through it easily, and I can help you and your sister get through it. The temple itself, I can’t touch. It’s like sacred ground, but with actual power. Only complete fanaticism can do that. It’s so devoted and monolithic that it keeps all other thoughts and ideas out. And in a way, all I am is billions upon billions of thoughts and ideas.” _

_ “I thought you were pure energy,” Dipper said.  _

_ “Of the most powerful kind,” Bill replied with a grin.  _

_ Dipper smiled back. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” he quoted.  _

_ “Cute,” Bill said. Then, after a pause for thought, “There may be a way you could de-consecrate the temple so I could get in, in case your diplomatic talks don’t turn up kittens and rainbows.” _

_ Dipper didn’t have anything against a contingency plan. “How?” _

_ “The defense relies on purity and unity of thought. I bet I’m just about the antithesis of whatever the idea is that’s keeping their thoughts unified, and I'm certain I'm a more powerful idea. If you scream my name and think of me in all my sinful, heathen ways, that might just shatter it.” _

_ Dipper silently cursed Mabel to no end, and tried not to blush.  _

_ Bill’s gaze focused on him intently, and again took on something of that mountain lion quality, but something different this time. “Why are you blushing this time?” _

_ “Nothing!” Dipper said quickly.  _

_Bill raised his eyebrow. “That wasn’t even a_ grammatically _correct answer to my question.”_

_ “Just forget about it!” Dipper pleaded.  _

_ “My memory is flawless, Pine Tree,” Bill said.  _

_ “It’s a figure of speech! It means I don’t want to talk about it!” Dipper said, practically all in one breath. He was thinking furiously about white elephants.  _

_Bill looked at Dipper as if he were insane, and it was then that Dipper knew he was in trouble. He might have a_ bit _of a — oh, who was he kidding? — a_ serious _crush on Bill Cipher._

_ “Okay…” Bill said. “You’ll need to know some mental defenses in case the Illuminati try to manipulate your mind. They’ve managed to pick up a few powers from the Mindscape over the centuries.” _

_ “Great!” Dipper said, too enthusiastically. “Let’s do that!” _

_ Bill slowly pushed off the invisible wall that he’d been leaning against, walking carefully and deliberately towards Dipper as if he thought he might step on another crazy switch. He stopped a little too close for Dipper’s comfort, but then again, at the edge of the infinite Mindscape would be a little too close for Dipper’s comfort at the moment. _

_ “Right now, your mind is completely defenseless,” he said. “For example, I don’t know what the deal is with your unhealthy fixation with white elephants, but it’s plain as day to anyone with even mild telepathic abilities. Someone more powerful could just walk right into your mind and start poking around. Watch, I’ll show you—“ _

_“NO!” Dipper screamed, so suddenly and so loud that_ Bill _jumped._

_“_ Yeesh _, kid,_ relax _. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”_

_ “What?!” Dipper feared he might soon be in danger of hyperventilating.  _

_ “Didn’t I mention?” Bill chuckled. “I possessed you once. It was fun!” _

_ “Bill, both of those things are extreme invasions of my privacy!” _

_ Bill was looking at him like he was crazy again. “Nothing’s private in the Mindscape. Every thought ever thought is around here somewhere.” _

_ Dipper was practically shaking.  _

_ “…But I’ll respect your ‘privacy’, Pine Tree,” Bill said. “You need to meet me halfway, though. Take off your hat.” _

_ Slowly, Dipper did so. Bill carefully raised his hands, long, gloved fingers spread, to either side of Dipper’s head.  _

_ “I have to show you how to do this,” he said with strained patience, “but I promise I won’t look. Okay?” _

_ Dipper could only nod. Bill placed his fingers lightly at Dipper’s temples, still not breaking eye contact.  _

_ “First, imagine your head has its own field of gravity. That shouldn’t be too hard.” _

_ Dipper frowned and opened his mouth to object, but Bill manifested a third hand and put a finger to Dipper’s lips. _ _ “Ah ah,” he scolded, shaking his head. “Concentrate.” _

_ Dipper huffed out his frustration and closed his eyes to concentrate.  _

_ “It should draw your thoughts in, condense them, keep them in your own head.” _

_ Dipper continued concentrating, and imagining.  _

_ “Good, kid,” Bill said soothingly. “Do you feel that?” _

_Dipper nodded, eyes still closed. He_ could _feel his thoughts condensing, becoming nearly impenetrable._

_“Now, I just have to rewire a few things so you can hold it on your own…” Bill said, and before Dipper had the chance to be alarmed, he felt the_ pop _in his head._

_ For a splitsecond, he felt the shield complete and hold, but the strange sensation startled him, breaking his concentration. And everything rushed out like a star exploding.  _

_The next thing he knew, he was kissing Bill like his life depended on it. _

_ For his part, Bill offered a small noise of surprise, but did not object in the slightest to the recent development. In fact, when Dipper finally came to his senses and tried to pull away in panic, Bill held him close with inhuman strength until they had damn well finished properly what they had started.  _

_ When the kiss finally ended, Dipper really was in danger of hyperventilating.  _

_ “Well if that doesn’t bring back memories,” Bill said.  _

_“I didn’t—“ Dipper gulped. “What did you do to my_ head _?”_

_ “I didn’t do anything that made you do _ that _, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bill said, eyeing Dipper’s furious blush appreciatively. _

_ Dipper whined in wordless distress. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what—“ _

_ “Why are you sorry?” Bill asked, tilting his head. “That was at least as good as last time.” _

_ “Would you stop talking about that?” Dipper said frantically. “It didn’t even happen in this timeline!” _

_ Bill shrugged, still smiling in amusement. “Anything for you, Pine Tree.” _

_ As he suspected, Dipper stuttered and blushed even more. Bill licked his lips.  _

_ “You should really think twice about that blushing reaction of yours,” he said, and their faces were still quite close, which meant that Bill practically whispered his next words in Dipper’s ear. “It makes you look positively delicious.” _

_Dipper hyperventilated and passed out._

Which, because he was already unconscious, meant that he woke up with a jolt in his bed.  After nearly ten minutes, he finally got his breathing under control. And realized there was something written on his hand: 

“I’ll teach your sister to shield. Don’t worry, I won’t let her kiss me too. – Bill”

Beneath that, there was a P.S. that told Dipper to look at his other hand. When he did so, he went right past a blush to a blanch. 

"By the way, if I ever make you scream like  _that_ , you won't remember your own name, let alone mine."

Also, he had outlined Dipper's hand like a turkey.


	8. Retro High School Disco Prom! (or, In Mabel's Dreams)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited the previous chapter just a tad. You can go back and reread if you like, but it isn't necessary.

_Bill was in stitches._ The poor kid _,_ _he thought. He hadn’t expected Pine Tree to actually_ swoon _in his arms. Then another thought occurred to him, and it made him just the slightest bit uneasy:_ The kid has no idea the kind of fire he’s playing with.

_Bill shrugged off his concern like it was an irritating insect. If the kid wanted to start something with him, he could assume his own risks. That was what being an adult was all about – foreseeing and accepting the consequences of one’s actions. Not that Bill knew much about that himself. Oh, he was an_ excellent _long-term planner, but in the meantime he tended to do what he wanted and turn the consequences to cinder._

_Still, if Pine Tree did manage to fall asleep again, Bill would let him dream. (Who was to say he wouldn’t dream of Bill anyway?) He didn’t want the kid too distracted before he had to walk into the temple of the Illuminati._

_Bill had survived encounters with a lot of things that would scare the skin off of anyone else. But humans, they could be by far the most dangerous if given the opportunity. Highly intelligent and incredibly stupid with an inferiority complex and a God complex all rolled into one, they would probably destroy the universe some day just to see what would happen. Of course, Bill knew that they would destroy themselves long before they got that far. The apex of a pyramid is precarious, and it only takes a slight misstep to tumble, screaming, from the top._

_Bill had stopped laughing by now. The Mindscape was in stitches, too, and_ he _was the stitches. He was holding the place together now, and he wouldn’t be able to leave for more than a minute or two at a time without everything going to hell in a handbasket. Once whatever was causing the damage was stopped, he could quickly make with the repairs, but now, it was all he could do to keep things from getting worse as quickly as they seemed to really,_ really _want to._

_He found Shooting Star’s dream easily. It was the one with the retro high school disco prom, complete with confetti, blinding dance lights and a significantly higher-than-average proportion of young, athletic men, all in nauseating technicolor._

_Even in the chaos, Shooting Star managed to stand out in a sparkling blue dress under a spotlight in the middle of the dance floor. Two of said athletic young men were vying for her attentions. One was even down on his knees. In that respect (and that one_ only _), Bill liked the girl’s style._

_“Oh, Chaz,” she was saying to the man on the floor, “you’re my best, most attractive friend.” She turned to the other man standing beside her, her hand in his. “But you can’t make me choose between you and Skyler. I love you, Chaz. But I’m_ in _love with Skyler!”_

_Before Bill had to endure another moment of the gag-inducing emotional mess before him, he shut it all down. The music wound down, the figures around Shooting Star faded, and all of the color leeched to black and white._

_Mabel blinked. “Oh, hey Bill,” she said. Then, realizing what had happened, she ran a hand through her hair and added, “Hooo, this is embarrassing.”_

_“I’ve seen worse,” Bill said. “You should see some of the things your brother dreams about.”_

_“I do_ not _wanna know,” she said. “So, what’s the occasion?”_

_"Aside from the disco prom?" Bill asked._

_"Yes, aside from my beautiful, heart-wrenching disco prom," Mabel said, her pride unhurt._

_“A little birdie told me you and your brother are going out to do your Mystery Twins routine tomorrow,” Bill said, manifesting a singing bluebird in his palm before making it disappear in a puff of blue flame._

_“Did this little birdie happen to wear a dorky baseball cap with a tree on it?” Mabel asked._

_“You know, he just might have,” Bill grinned._

_“So Dipper found something out!”_

_“Oh, yes,” Bill said. “I’m sure he’ll tell you aaaaall about it in the morning. But tonight, it’s my job to beef you two up with a little bit of mental brawn. Take that ridiculous prom queen tiara off and we’ll get started.”_

_Bill successfully taught Shooting Star how to shield her mind, makeout-free. All that happened when he switched the wires in her head and her shield exploded was a blurted, “Wait, Chaz! I made a mistake! I love you instead!” before she clapped her hands over her mouth._

_“That should do it,” Bill said, clapping invisible dust from his gloved hands. “I’ll leave you to Chaz and Skyler.”_

_“Wait!” Mabel said as the ghosts of music and color and people began to slowly return to the room. “I almost forgot. How did your dream date with Dipper go?”_

_Bill raised his eyebrow at the term. “He had his tongue down my throat in the first ten minutes.”_

_Mabel retched. “TMI, Bill!”_

_Bill shrugged. “You asked.”_

_“My Little Dipper’s growing up so fast,” she said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. Then she lunged at Bill and locked her arms around his waist in an aggressive hug. “Take care of him.”_

_“Sure thing, Shooting Star,” he gasped, just so she would let go._

_She did. “I mean it, Bill,” she said._

_Bill nodded, then turned and walked away into the crowd of discoing high schoolers._ So do I _, he realized._

_Before he left the dream, behind him he heard Chaz and Skyler demand in unison, “Who was_ that _guy?”_


	9. A Demon Told Me To Do It

Dipper woke up panting, and not from a nightmare. He was certain of that, even though all he could remember from his dream was a flash of golden eye, a too-sharp smile and the echoes of an unmistakable voice. He groaned in frustration, though whether at the fact that he'd had the dream at all or that it had been over too soon, he wasn't sure and didn't want to think about. At least it hadn’t been the real Bill – everything that happened in the Mindscape outside of dreams, Dipper could recall as clearly as any other memory. Which of course meant that he remembered real Bill’s visit last night in perfect detail. 

Man, he was _so_ screwed. 

He spent ten minutes scrubbing Bill’s stupid messages and drawing off of his hands before he went to find Mabel.  He caught her just coming out of her room and he ushered her back inside so they could talk in privacy. Dipper filled her in on his suspicions against the Illuminati, and what he had learned about them from Bill and the journals. 

Mabel smiled slyly when he mentioned Bill. “I hear your totally ‘just friends’ dream date went well.”

Shit, what had Bill told her? 

Mabel must have seen the question all over his face, because she answered, “Just a _little_ bit more than I wanted to hear about my twin brother _ever_. But congrats! I was gonna make you a card with glitter and everything, but you woke up so early.”

Thank God for the little things. Still, Dipper wasn’t nearly as excited about this recent development as Mabel seemed to be. Thanks to him ignoring his feelings towards Bill and pointedly _not thinking_ about him in that way until now, Dipper already had it bad for the demon.  But he still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure at any given moment that Bill wasn’t about to turn around and slit his throat just to watch the blood flow. Well, he had a _feeling_ Bill wouldn’t do that, but what good were feelings? Dipper needed facts! And even if Bill meant _him_ no ill will, the demon’s long-term plans were still mysterious, though Dipper was certain that they didn’t involve opening a new hospital and orphanage to help the needy out of the goodness of Bill’s heart. Did Bill even have a heart? Could a demon love anything? …Anyone?

“I don’t know, Mabel,” Dipper sighed, confused. “Obviously I like him, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to get too close to him.”

Mabel nodded understandingly. “It’s your call, Brobro. Trust your judgement.”

Dipper wanted to talk about this more with his sister, but they had cataclysmic supernatural events to avert, and they needed to make a plan. 

First, they had to hooky out of their shifts in the shop. Mabel told Dipper to leave it up to her to convince Wendy and Soos to cover for them. Honestly they could probably tell the truth and the two would believe them, but the truth included the Mindscape and Bill, and those were secrets that Mabel and Dipper especially weren’t ready to share. So Mabel had invented a story about an impending gnome invasion instead, and would sweeten the pot with an offer to make them both a huge Mabel’s Famous Marble Cake for their trouble, thus rendering the first part of the plan flawless. 

Dipper had gathered up some potentially useful devices and enchanted items they’d found on their adventures and stuffed them into a backpack (Mabel had insistently added her grappling hook to the mix), and he had the journal’s map to the temple of the Illuminati, but Bill had said he would help them get through the first ring of defense. 

**_I did say that, didn’t I?_ **

Dipper and Mabel both started and looked around, but the dream demon was nowhere in sight. 

**_Hey, kiddos! Guess where I am! Go on, guess!_ **

“The Mindscape?” Mabel hazarded, while Dipper was busy with his white elephants. 

**_That’s right, Shooting Star. More specifically,_ your _mindscapes. I’m in your heads!_**

While Mabel looked concerned, panic spiked through Dipper. 

**_HAHAHA!_ ** Bill’s laughter was a bit maniacal. **_Relax, kids. I’m just plugged into the part that lets you hear voices in your head._**

“Like crazy people?” Mabel asked.

**_Exactly! You’re on a roll, Shooting Star. Awfully quiet in the Pine Tree corner. Anyway, all I’m gonna do is talk to you and shadow you in the Mindscape as far as I can. I’ll be here when you need me. And you can cut it out with those elephants, Pine Tree. I already know I’m at the top of your hit list, if you catch my meaning._ **

“Bill!” Dipper yelped, but from the look of confusion Mabel gave him at his outburst, he realized that last part had only been directed to him. 

Bill laughed lowly in the back of his mind in a way that sent pleasant shivers down Dipper’s spine. **_Got you, Pine Tree._**

Dipper glowered at Mabel’s dresser since he couldn’t do it at Bill. He couldn’t think straight when his attention was rather vastly divided between the urgency and danger of their task, and anticipating with very mixed emotions the possibility that Bill would start talking dirty to him in his head, if just to laugh at the way he’d make Dipper squirm.  

_**Do you want me to talk** **dirty?**_

_'Oh my God, Bill,_ no!'Dipper thought.Well, at least now Dipper knew he had the strength to refuse. 

_**You sure? I'm very good at it. It's practically in the job descrip—** _

_'Would_   _you_ please _just_ stop _with the teasing?!'_

**_Them’s fightin’ words, Pine Tree. Are you sure that’s what you_ want _?_** Bill’s voice dipped low on the last word.

Dipper’s cheeks heated and he once again cursed his terrible word choices. “That’s not what I meant, Bill, and you know it!” he sputtered, forgetting to think his words. 

Mabel, who had been miffed at being left out of what appeared to be a very interesting conversation, now picked up on the nature of that conversation, and was relieved that she had not been included. 

_'Um, Bill?'_ she thought. 

**_Yes, Shooting Star?_ **

Mabel glanced at Dipper, but now he seemed as oblivious as she had been. _'Could you please stop teasing Dipper, at least until this is all over? He’s already a bit…divided over some things, and he needs his full attention on what we’re doing.'_

Bill chuckled. **_He just asked me the same thing. But not to worry, Shooting Star, I’ll quit driving your brother to distraction, even though it’s so terribly easy._**

_'Thanks, Bill.'_

Bill didn’t respond until he addressed them both again a moment later. **_Alright kiddos, I’ve had my fun. I promise I’ll keep my trap shut unless I think of something that I absolutely must share. Have fun, and remember: don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!_**

“ _God_ , he’s _insufferable_!” Dipper griped after Bill had fallen silent. 

**_I didn’t go anywhere._ **

Dipper growled, but Mabel put her hand over his, and he calmed down a little. “Let’s go,” he said, standing up with resolve. 

They waited at the top of the stairs until Grunkle Stan led the tour group he had rounded up around the back of the Shack, and then Mabel pounced on Soos and Wendy to make their elevator pitch.  

“God, I hate those gnomes," Wendy said when Mabel had finished. "They’re always leering at me from under the bushes when I’m out helping my dad with the lumber business. Call me if you need any help kicking their asses.”

“And I’d work an extra _week_ for some Mabel’s Famous Marble Cake,” Soos said. 

“Thanks, guys,” Dipper said. “We owe you one.”

“No problem,” Wendy said. “We’ll hold down the fort. You guys go dominate the battlefield.”

“Go, team!” Soos whooped. 

And with the perfect sendoff, the Mystery Twins headed out on the road into town. 

** △ **

They hadn't walked ten feet before Dipper noticed Bill’s triangular shadow following them a few feet behind, presumably projecting through from the Mindscape. It was eerie to say the least, but also, Dipper had to admit, reassuring. How could he not feel safer knowing that the baddest wolf in the woods was acting as their personal escort on their way to grandmother’s house? 

Once they got into town, Dipper pulled out the map and they followed the main street across to its end, then turned right to skirt the backs of the buildings at the edge of town until they came to a small footpath leading off to the left and back into the woods. From the map, the temple should have been just a hundred yards ahead of them, but the footpath looked like it went on for a mile before vanishing entirely between the trees. 

“This can’t be right,” Dipper said. “The map says it’s just up ahead. We should be able to see it.”

**_Why don’t you go take a look?_ **

Bill obviously knew something they didn’t, and had opted to be smug and cryptic about it instead of sharing.  Dipper walked a frustrated few yards down the path with Mabel catching up to his side and gradually, like a heat mirage, an old building that looked like a thematic mixture between a European Christian church and an ancient Roman temple shimmered into view. 

It was at that point that it occurred to Dipper that it would be an excellent idea to go explore the woods on the other side of town, and at the same time, it occurred to Mabel that a huge, four-flavored ice cream cone would be the _perfect_ thing right now and she should go back into town and get one. They were about to take off in different directions when they heard a voice in their heads say,  **_Oh, no you don’t._  **

Two and a half pairs of eyes in two different dimensions flashed bright blue and then faded to a steady glow. 

“Wha…?” Dipper said dreamily.

“Hmr…?” echoed Mabel. 

**_I’ll keep you two noodlebrains focused. Just keep walking towards that building._ **

A little dazed but with their senses quickly returning, they did just that. 


	10. Lights in the Darkness

**_Alright, kids, once you walk through those doors you’ll be on your own. Get those shields up now._ **

“Wait, won’t that hurt you?” Mabel asked. 

Bill nearly went into hysterics. **_Aw man, you’re funny, Shooting Star. I’d never teach you guys something powerful enough to use against_ me _. Though if it’s any consolation, there_ isn’t _anything that powerful! Except whatever those jackasses are doing in that temple._**

“Oh,” Mabel said blankly. “Okay.”

She and Dipper both concentrated on the mental shield that Bill had taught them, and were surprised to find that it was much easier the second time. Dipper suspected it had something to do with Bill’s “rewiring.”

**_See? Still here. Well, until you two stop waiting for an engraved invitation to go in there and kick those cultists’ gold-clad asses. Diplomatically._ **

Dipper rolled his eyes and took Mabel’s hand as they each set a hand on one of the tall, wooden doors. They would do this together, like always. 

**_Be careful._ **

“We’ll be fine, Bill,” Dipper huffed, though he was far from confident. 

Mabel looked at him curiously, and he realized with a shock that those two words had been meant only for him. 

“Uh, he just made a smartass comment about us knocking ourselves out with our own grappling hook,” Dipper said.

**_Nice save, kid. She totally bought it._ **

From Bill’s sarcasm, he knew she hadn’t. And when she smiled big and Mabel-y at him, he knew she _really_ hadn’t. 

“ _Sure_ , Brobro. Thank Bill for his concern for me.”

**_Yeah, Pine Tree. Why don’t you thank—_ **

_‘Shut it, Bill,’_ Dipper thought. _‘And…I will.’_ ****He shook his head. Bill saying something so obviously, genuinely nice to him was even more distracting than Bill talking dirty.

**_Still an option._ **

Dipper shoved hard on his door and dragged Mabel through. 

** △ **

“You can stop taking out your demon boyfriend feels on my hand now,” Mabel whispered, when the door closed behind them.

Dipper started and released Mabel’s hand, realizing how tight his grip had been from his annoyance with Bill.  “Sorry, Mabs,” he said. He wasn’t going to argue. 

It was a relief to have his mind to himself again. This temple was probably the only place in Gravity Falls where Bill couldn’t pry into his thoughts. Despite Dipper’s rising fears about what lay at the heart of this old structure, the silence was peaceful. He definitely didn’t miss that annoying voice echoing inside his skull. Not at all. Really. 

The lack of a sarcastic quip from the one-triangle peanut gallery at Dipper’s pathetic uncertainty was both a liberation and just a little bit of a disappointment.

“This place is _weird_ ,” Mabel whispered. 

The temple had very high ceilings with spiraling columns running up to support oblong domes. Intricate black and white frescos latticed every inch of the walls and ceilings, and the golden Eye of Providence watched them from everywhere. 

“I agree,” Dipper whispered, not feeling so alone in his mind anymore. “Let’s get this done as quickly as possible.”

They made their way down the entrance hall to the only other apparent exit from the large central chamber: a flight of marble stairs set into the center of the floor beneath the main dome, leading underground. As Mabel and Dipper approached, they could make out a faint, flickering orange light cast on the walls near the bottom of the dark spiral staircase. Someone was home after all. 

They both put a finger to their lips as a signal to be quiet at the same time, and smiled despite their nerves. Yep. Still twins. 

They crept down the stairs slowly, and it wasn’t long before they could hear low chanting from below. Dipper translated the Latin in his head: _“We are the light in the darkness. We are the bastion of the mind. We are the banishers of nightmares, and their Lord do we bind.”_

A binding ritual? The Lord of Nightmares was obviously Bill, and Dipper should _not_ be thinking right now that the title was kind of hot. He took a breath and refocused. Were they turning the Mindscape into a cage? He’d say that definitely qualified as “severely altering” its structure. 

On the upside, they had definitely found their culprits. On the downside, they were running out of stairs. 

** △ **

Bill Cipher was extremely uncomfortable. It was a relief not to have to pretend that he was his usual cocky yet charming self for the twins anymore now that they’d entered the temple. The truth was, it was taking everything he had to maintain the structural integrity of the Mindscape. Its edges were now in a constant flow and flux, but with every influx they crept in just a little bit closer. On top of that, the Mindscape’s instability was causing the the edges of _other_ dimensions to begin to slide their way in, the overlap causing small paradoxes. Luckily, the Mindscape could handle a lot of paradox, but if Bill didn’t keep enough of the Mindscape pure, he wouldn’t have enough of a power reserve to keep this up. Paradoxically. 

He was vaguely aware of his body flickering between its true and human forms at the heart of the Mindscape, but his mind was stretched across the entire dimension, feeling all of the pressure and the vacuum, the way the other dimensions sliced into the skin of his own, and thinking about the difference between good old-fashioned insanity and having one’s entire identity ripped apart at the seams. 


	11. The Lord of Nightmares

The stairs let out on one side of a large, triangular room with unbroken ranks of candles lining the perimeter. In the center, nine figures in golden robes that almost glowed in the candlelight stood in a triangular formation, facing inwards, aligned with the room. Each held a candle raised to approximately where the forehead would be under the deep hood. Three more robed figures lay on the stone floor, their heads together in the center of the triangle, their feet touching each of its points. It looked from their slow and steady breathing as if they were asleep. 

Dipper cleared his throat. Nine hooded faces snapped towards him. 

“Um, hello, brothers and, uh, maybe sisters of the Illuminati. My sister and I come with a very important message for you about what you’re doing to the Mindscape.”

The figures did not stop their chanting, but he felt a questing presence at the edges of his mind, and then a sudden, forceful pressure against his shield. From Mabel’s little gasp beside him, she felt it, too. 

Silently, Dipper passed her his backpack behind their backs, and she dipped her chin ever so slightly in understanding. Their shields were no match for twin telepathy. 

Dipper heard a voice in his head, and quite different from the ethereal echo of Bill’s voice, this one sounded like many different voices woven together. 

_‘Let us into your minds. We wish to see your intentions.’_

“Uh, no can do, I’m really sorry. You’ll just have to listen, and trust that what I’m saying is true. We have nothing against you all, and it seems like you’re _trying_ to do a good thing here, but I’m here to tell you that it’s going to go terribly wrong.”

_‘You think you know something we do not? We have studied and practiced this art for centuries.’_

Well, at least the Illuminati weren’t immediately attacking them. But with this kind of magic, if you broke the formation, you broke the spell. Dipper suspected that was the main reason for their calm reception. But Bill Cipher was proof that there were many highly effective attacks one could launch with and upon the mind alone. 

“That depends,” Dipper said. “Do you know that changing the Mindscape like this will cause plagues of insanity and nightmares across the world?”

_‘That is a risk. But the threat that the master of that realm poses to humanity is much greater.’_

“If you tear the Mindscape apart to get to him, it’ll destroy everything about humanity that’s worth protecting!” Mabel said, fighting to keep calm. 

_‘Our aim is not to destroy the Mindscape. We are carefully collapsing it to hold the demon within. In time, the energy that the demon expends to maintain the structure of its own prison will leave it weak enough that the Mindscape may disassemble it into its component ideas, and consume them. This will lend the realm enough energy that we may reform it as it was, with no master. Humanity would regain control of its own mind.’_

Their plan actually sounded as if it might work. But every step was incredibly risky, and Bill…

“Even _if_ you manage to change the Mindscape enough to contain the demon but not enough to break the mind of humanity, and even _if_ you manage to remake the Mindscape as it was, it _needs_ a master. It would be chaos otherwise.” Dipper remembered with a shiver Bill’s description of the creatures that lurk in the darkest corners of his realm. If they had free reign, it might be even worse than if the Mindscape were destroyed. 

_‘If that is the case, we are prepared to assume reign over the realm.’_

“But that would drive any human insane!” Dipper was quickly getting frustrated with these people for being so presumptuous as to gamble – and badly – with the future of the entire species. 

_‘We are not one. We are many.’_

“Even twelve humans can’t make up a fraction of a percent of the mind of the demon that rules the Mindscape,” Dipper said, and boy was he glad that Bill wasn’t listening in right now. He’d probably start preening. 

_‘We have developed a means of…conscription. All that devote themselves under the Eye of Providence, that is to say, the other chapters of our Order around the globe, will surrender their minds to the task. It is their duty.’_

“That surrender won’t be willing, will it.” Mabel said, showing a rare spark of true anger. 

_‘The human will is flawed. Our brethren in other chapters are currently surrendering the power of their minds to this ritual without will or awareness. We must all do what is necessary.’_

“Even all of the members of the Illuminati in the world won’t be enough to rule the Mindscape. I know this demon,” Dipper said, figuring it was his last chance to talk some sense into these fanatics. 

_‘Our chapter is trained in the ways of the mind, and we will coordinate the others. We believe this will be enough. As for your connection to the Lord of Nightmares, we are aware of it. The demon is able to watch all but us, and we watch the demon.’_ The chorus of voices was still inhumanly calm and void of any recognizable emotion, and it gave Dipper chills just as easily as Bill’s voice when it resounded in anger across twenty dimensions and seemed as though it might shatter them.  

“Then trust me when I say that what you’re doing won’t work, and it will have terrible consequences for us all.” Dipper was practically pleading now. 

_‘Anything the demon or one of its tainted acolytes says is inherently untrustworthy. But you may still be saved, if you will see the light. Can you not tell that every word the demon speaks is a lie? Do you not see its evil, that it is a parasitic disease in our minds? The Lord of Nightmares has massacred our brethren in the past, and laughed while doing so. You two are siblings, are you not? Imagine what that is like.’_

For a brief flash, Dipper did. He saw Bill standing over Mabel’s lifeless, broken body, his yellow suit drenched in red, his golden eye shining while he cackled in a way that split through Dipper’s skull. It was his greatest fear since he had first met the demon in the woods, and it had taken up stubborn, permanent residence at the edge of his thoughts like a stray dog that he had fed once, and thereafter refused to leave. But he pointedly dismissed the image. That was not the Bill Cipher he knew, and the Illuminati had deliberately and long ago made themselves Bill's enemy. 

“You can’t dismiss the rest of the world as collateral damage in your personal vendetta against the demon,” Dipper said. 

_‘It is not personal. The Lord of Nightmares is too dangerous to be allowed to live and reign over our dreams. It recently even altered_ time itself. _We do not remember that this occurred, but the scars from the event are visible through the Mindscape. It is even more powerful than we knew, and it cannot live.’_

Something in Dipper finally snapped. “This demon has been around since the dawn of intelligent life in the universe, and he hasn’t fucked everything up yet! Meanwhile, your Order is, what, a few hundred years old? And here you are about to plunge the world into insanity! _You_ are the threat to humanity, not Bill!”

The silence was stiff, and stretched the seconds long. 

Finally, the voice(s) returned. _‘We see that we cannot enlighten you. The demon has clouded your vision irreparably. We are sorry, but we cannot allow the demon’s influence to spread.’_

The pressure against their mental shields suddenly increased exponentially, and Dipper grit his teeth with the effort of keeping his own in tact against the onslaught. He needed to let Bill into the temple, but in order to do that, he needed to concentrate, and right now it was taking all of his concentration to maintain his shield under the pressure. 

“Mabel, now!” he hissed, but Mabel was already drawing the memory erasing gun out of Dipper’s backpack and aiming it into the center of the conveniently compact and immobile group of cult members. 

She fired, and the pressure in their heads dissipated, but the chanting did not stop. 

The chorus of voices returned, and this time it sounded just a little bit smug. _‘An intriguing device. But we have shielded ourselves from the master of the Mindscape for centuries. It may as well be a water pistol.’_

“Oh yeah? Well shield yourselves from this! Eat grappling hook!” Mabel whipped out her grappling hook and shot, and the blunt metal trio of hooks knocked hard into the nearest cultist’s head. 

The figure staggered, but did not break the triangular formation. And Mabel had now made herself the priority target. 

She screamed and dropped to her hands and knees as the cultists focused all their energy on her and began crushing her mental shield. 

Dipper had closed his eyes and began to concentrate the moment Mabel had fired the memory gun. He imagined Bill walking cooly through an entire landscape of blue flame, stepping over thousands of broken corpses strewn over the earth. The soft leather touch of nimble, gloved fingers ghosting down his ribs, over his stomach. He imagined Bill whistling and twirling his cane, then driving it through the skull of an innocent passer-by and laughing as she fell. A hand pushing him back, strong but tantalizingly slow, holding him down while another crept up his inner thigh. He imagined Bill slowly driving a man insane with relentless nightmares of him killing his own family, until he finally gave in and did just that. Soft, thin lips brushing over his own, teasing with warm, tingling breath before claiming his mouth, wet and hot and languid, and stealing his breath away. Heat, pleasure, ecstasy. Fear, terror, insanity. Echoes of an unmistakable voice. A too-sharp smile. A flash of golden eye. 

“BILL CIPHER!” Dipper screamed. 

There was a violent crack of energy through the air, and Bill Cipher stepped onto the physical plane, surrounded by what looked like black lightning, crackling and striking like snakes around him. The color began to slowly drain from the room, like paint dripping down the walls. The cultists’ chanting faltered, and then sped up, taking on a driving rhythm. 

Bill’s form flickered, but when it returned he shot his hand out towards the nearest golden-robed figure, sending the person flying across the room, skull cracking as it hit the wall. The formation was broken. 

"Oops," Bill said.

The chanting ceased, and then the screaming began as the cultists all tried to flee for the only set of stairs. 

Bill began to laugh, quiet and slow at first as the black lightning crackled around him and his fingers seemed to stretch into long, scythe-like claws, then rising to an ear-piercing, dimension-shattering cackle as the lightning shot forth to encircle each robed figure, the sleeping ones awakening from their trance with a jolt as they were lifted into the air with the others. The cultists convulsed from the powerful shocks, their screams becoming shrieks of agony and absolute terror. 

Bill’s eye flashed gold as it fell on the twins, standing paralyzed with fear, unable to look away.  

“Why don't you two wait for me outside? I wouldn’t want to give you n͈͙̗̲̟͂̄ͨ̂ͅḭ̵̯͚̥͎̯ͮ̅͛͆ģ̍ͣ̇̍̑̑̚̚͜͏̪̻͔͕̱h̛͉͇̥͍͉͋͂͝t̲̝̟̺ͬ͌ͫ̑͒̔̔m̡̄̈́ͩ̌̎҉̺͈̪̬̬͕̲̻a̭̳͔̩̳̅̈́͊ͭ̂ͥ̍͠͞r̦̯͍͈̥̝̹̘ͨͧ̄̑ͥ̃̚e̺̣̊͋̉s̨͇͚̟̳̯̬̗̮̞̿̌͗̑ͩ̊͢͠,” he said with a sharp, manic grin full of sharklike teeth. He didn't raise his voice, but it was easily audible over the piercing screams. 

Neither of them was going to argue with that. Suddenly regaining control of their legs, they sprinted for the stairs, and when they were halfway up, all of the candles below them went out. They didn’t stop running until they had pulled the giant wooden doors of the temple shut behind them with a _boom_ and slid to the ground, hearts pounding, heaving in lungfulls of the cool forest air. 

“Dipper?” Mabel said quietly, once she had regained her breath. “We picked the right side, didn’t we?”

“I…” he began, but stopped. “I hope so.”


	12. Glitches

There was no point in running. The temple of the Illuminati was the only place they would have been safe from Bill Cipher, and Dipper had just destroyed all of its barriers against the dream demon. So they stayed right where they were, sitting with their backs against the temple, waiting to see just what would come out. 

They didn’t hear the doors open, because Bill didn’t use them. “Well that was fun!”

He appeared out of nowhere standing beside them, and they froze at the sound of his voice. Slowly, they looked up at the demon. He was brushing invisible dust off of his surprisingly spotless suit. They had both expected it to be spattered with fresh blood when he finally emerged, but still, there was no indication that it _hadn’t_ been just moments before. He could fix himself up with a snap of his fingers. 

He met their apprehensive gazes one by one, and then broke into a huge, gleeful grin. “Did I really scare you guys? I’m flattered.”

Dipper really didn’t want to, but he knew he had to ask. He coughed to loosen the tight knot in his throat. “Uh, Bill? Is anyone still…alive…down there?”

“Nope!” Bill chimed, looking pleased with himself. 

Dipper went pale, and felt like he might be sick. The Illuminati had been a danger, certainly – reckless and fanatical and just about as inhuman as Bill himself, but they had pursued a cause that could have been called noble. They had been _trying_ to do something good, and they didn’t deserve…

Bill clutched at his sides and laughed at Dipper’s reaction. Worryingly, his form flickered black-and-white as he did so. 

“Man, Pine Tree, you _have_ to work on your wording if you’re going to hang around with demons. It could get you into trouble.” Bill winked, or so Dipper guessed. “No one’s _down there_ anymore, because I pulled them all into the Mindscape! Even the guy whose skull I fractured – and I fixed that by the way; I want them all to live nice and long!”

“So…you didn’t kill _anyone_?” Mabel asked hopefully. 

“Not a one,” Bill said. “By now, they’ll already be wishing I had.”

“What did you do to them?” Dipper asked. 

“Well I tucked their _bodies_ away in a boring, empty dimension so they can safely live out the rest of their natural lives. As for their minds, I trapped each in its own perpetual worst nightmare! And since they did that creepy mind-merging thing with each other, their worst nightmares are all the same thing! Guess what it is!”

Dipper had a feeling he knew. 

Thankfully, Bill wasn’t patient enough to wait for an answer that didn’t seem immediately forthcoming from two all but trembling teenagers. “It's me! I’m their worst nightmare!” He buffed his nails (his _gloved_ nails) on his shoulder in a gesture of pride. “I mean, sure, if more people knew I existed, that would be nothing special, but I keep a low profile. It’s nice to get some recognition for my work once in a while, you know?”

“Bill, are you…okay?” Mabel asked cautiously. “You’re kind of… _flickering_ a lot, and acting maybe just the _teensiest_ bit more, um, manic than usual.”

“Aw, don’t worry about me, Shooting Star,” Bill cooed. “I'm just recovering from nearly being ripped apart mind and body across a hundred different dimensions.” Briefly, his eye flashed red in a rage that lasted barely a second, and then vanished. “Half of me's still in the Mindscape fixing the place back up. I’ve just got a few glitches to deal with in the meantime. Speaking of which, look what I can do!” He shoved his own hand through his stomach and out the other side, wiggling his fingers, his body flickering rapidly as he did so. 

_“Bleh!”_ Mabel said, covering her eyes, at the same time as Dipper yelled, “Don’t do that! That’s not helping you!”

Dipper hadn’t realized how close a call this whole thing had been for Bill, and he understood the demon’s actions in the temple just a little better. Bill’s life had been in jeopardy. Dipper knew that must not happen often. 

“Well you’re no fun,” Bill said, sticking his tongue out at Dipper, but still removing his hand. 

Dipper sighed. Bill was difficult enough to deal with when he _wasn’t_ in the process of stitching his already lacking sanity back together. 

“You’d never know it from that crazy imagination you got on ya, kid,” Bill continued. “What you did down there was impressive – worked like a charm. But at least a couple of those things I haven’t even done! …Yet.” 

Bill’s smile suddenly turned sly, and no, Dipper could _not_ deal with Bill turning around and flirting with him right after he’d just damned an entire cult to a realm of eternal nightmare. Dipper knew better now – the whole Lord of Nightmares thing was definitely _not_ hot. It was just downright terrifying. 

And speaking of terrifying, after that last flicker, there were now two copies of Bill speaking in unison, and they hadn’t even noticed yet. 

Mabel raised her hand politely to get Bill’s (Bills’?) attention, and then crossed her arms over each other and pointed at each copy to draw their attention to the matter. 

The two copies blinked, and then turned towards each other. Huge smiles broke out on both of their faces at the same time. Each looked the other over approvingly. 

“Handsome devil, aren’t I?” one said. 

“If I do say so myself,” the other agreed. “I don’t blame ya, Pine Tree.”

Dipper slapped a hand over his face and tried to drown out the world. Bill was so narcissistic, Dipper wouldn’t put it past him to flat-out start making out with himself, which was something Dipper really…didn’t…want…to see…

Both Bills fixed their gazes on him with eyebrows arched, and shit, it was way too late for white elephants with that one. Then an identical mischievous look passed over their faces, and they turned back to each other. The one on the left gave the one on the right a come-hither look, and the one on the right stepped in close and slid a hand onto the other’s shoulder, and their faces were now just inches apart, and the one on the right placed his other hand on the chest of the one on the left, and then drew it back as quick as lightning and ripped the other’s heart out of his body. The one who had just had his heart ripped out looked down at the mortal wound and began to laugh like it was the funniest thing in the world, before he flickered and vanished. 

“Philosophical question for ya, kids,” said the remaining Bill, sending the heart in his hand up in blue flames. “Was that murder or suicide?”

Mabel and Dipper shared a wide-eyed look, and agreed with each other whole-heartedly. 

“We’re going home, Bill,” Dipper announced. “When you’ve fixed your freaky glitches, we need to talk. But now I need to go collapse across something and sleep for like, ten hours if my blood pressure’s ever going to go back to normal.” 

“Dipper, do you think it’s safe to sleep right now, with the Mindscape as it is?” Mabel asked.

“I’ll make sure it’s safe for you,” Bill said, suddenly _very_ uncharacteristically tender. “Go home and rest. You did good. And, uh, thanks.”

Before either could finish processing _that_ , Bill vanished in a flash of blue light. 

Dipper blinked. Bill’s new, even-worse-than-normal mood swings were giving him whiplash. He would relish unconsciousness. He figured Bill would be busy enough to keep out of his dreams. 

** △ **

Back in the Mindscape, it took Bill a moment to process his own parting words, and when he did, he realized that he might be in worse condition than he’d thought. 

** △ **

Wendy took one look at the twins’ faces and ushered them to the stairs without asking. She gave them each a firm, reassuring grip on the shoulder as they started their trek up the stairs, exhausted.  

They fell asleep together on Mabel’s bed, because it was closest, and wished more than ever that they could stay together in their dreams. 


	13. A Demon at the Dinner Table

Dipper woke panting, from a nightmare of long, black claws raking across his skin. He didn’t begrudge Bill his retribution on his long-time antagonists and would-be murderers, especially as it had also most likely saved all of humanity from a descent into mindless chaos. He believed, regardless of his personal feelings towards the demon, that they had chosen the right side. But he had seen Bill become a true monster in that temple, the one Dipper had always feared lurked just beneath the surface and behind that unnatural, golden eye. His subconscious would, apparently, take more convincing that there was more to the man than the demon. 

Mabel was already awake beside him, and had evidently been holding his hand through his nightmare to comfort him. She gave him a small, reassuring smile when he looked up into her eyes. 

“Thanks, Mabel,” he said, squeezing her hand before letting go. “You’re the best.”

“I know,” she said. 

They ventured downstairs, following the smell of dinner cooking like a lure. They did not expect Grunkle Stan, Wendy and Bill to be sitting around the table chatting amicably, waiting for them. 

When Wendy noticed them standing halfway up the stairs, shocked and uncertain, she jumped up with a smile and told them to come sit down. She didn't seem to be hallucinating, under hypnosis or otherwise in a demon's thrall. “Soos got called home by his mom to take care of an infestation of some seriously freaky six-legged rats, but I didn’t want to leave until I knew you guys would be alright. Your friend Bill here was just telling us about your epic battle with the gnomes. Man, no wonder you guys were so beat when you got back.”

“It’s a poor excuse to miss work,” Grunkle Stan grumbled. “Not that I believe a word of it,” he added quickly.

Dipper locked eyes with Bill across the table as he sat down, Mabel beside him, and mumbled, “Oh yeah, you know the gnomes. Woodland creature cavalry, fusing into giant gnome monsters, shooting nightmare lightning from their hands.”

Bill gave Dipper a curious look.

“Whoa, that’s a new one,” Wendy said. “Anyway, I should get going now. Good to see you two up and running again.”

“Aw, Red, you aren’t staying for dinner?” Bill asked, pouting. 

“This isn’t a bed-and-breakfast,” Grunkle Stan said, but Dipper could tell he was about to get up and fetch another plate.

“Sorry guys, I got hell to raise,” Wendy said.

“Sounds fun,” Bill all but purred. 

Wendy – _Wendy_ – blushed before quickly buckling on her helmet, giving a wave and then walking out the door. They heard her start her motorcycle and ride off. 

Dipper gave Bill a look. Bill shrugged. Dipper shook his head and narrowed his eyes, _‘we’re talking later.’_ Bill grinned, _‘I look forward to it.’_

“Man, that’s even creepier than when you do it with Mabel,” Grunkle Stan said. “I’m gonna go get dinner now. When I get back, I expect all conversations to be in words.”

He left the table. It took all of Dipper’s restraint not to leap across at Bill and strangle the demon for showing up to their house and acting chummy with their friends and family, and somehow even charming Grunkle Stan into letting him stay for dinner. Grunkle Stan was a conman for christ’s sake! Bill couldn’t seriously be that good. 

“Bill, are you feeling better?” Mabel asked, breaking the ice before Dipper could say something stupid. 

“Much, thank you!” Bill said. “I worked my ass off getting it this way, but the Mindscape is now 99.98% back to normal. I’ve got a couple things to finish up there, and the place’ll have some permanent scars from what those evil bastards did to it, but overall, crisis averted!”

Dipper couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of Bill Cipher calling anyone an evil bastard. 

“I just came by to check on my two favorite humans, and because Pine Tree said he wanted to talk, and had his serious face on when he said it.”

Mabel nodded sagely. She knew that face well. She usually ignored it.

“What did you tell Grunkle Stan about how we know you, and…who you are?” Dipper asked, coming to terms with the fact that Bill was going to sit down with them for family dinner. 

“I just said I was new in town from Portland – that’s a human city around here, isn’t it? – and that you two were nice enough to show me around the other day when we happened across that pesky gnome army amassing in the woods and decided to beat back the hordes together.” 

Aside from the fact that Bill pronounced Portland like ‘Port–Land’, his story was believable.  Dipper was just about to let out a sigh of relief when Bill said, “Oh, and then he asked me where I was living, and I didn’t know the names of any of the places in town, so I asked if I could live here. He asked if I had money, and I asked if he would accept gold, and he kind of manhandled me inside and upstairs to the corner room and threw some sheets and a pillow at my face and said if I wanted breakfast and turndown service, his lovely grand-niece and -nephew would be happy to provide. I turned him down on that of course, since I’ll barely be here, and it hardly seemed like a show of gratitude after you two helped me out of hot water with the Illuminati, but on paper, we’re housemates now! It took Stan and me ages to settle on a contract – he's almost as good a cheat as I am!”

Suddenly, Grunkle Stan's "bed-and-breakfast" comment made a lot more sense. Only Bill could manage to turn a friendly visit into a contractual cohabitation agreement. Grunkle Stan returned with dinner before the twins had a chance to react to the news. It was scary how well Bill and Grunkle Stan seemed to get along, with Bill offering creative suggestions to stretch Grunkle Stan’s scams further, and even coming up with new ideas for the man to try. They swapped stories about “the good old days” without Grunkle Stan seeming to realize that Bill in human form looked way too young to have had any of the experiences he described. As usual, Grunkle Stan was completely oblivious or in deep denial of the supernatural now literally staring him in the face. He hadn’t even asked about Bill’s obviously inhuman gold, slit-pupiled eye yet. Or his ethereal, echoing voice. Why Bill ever thought he could pass as human, Dipper couldn't fathom, but it seemed to be working for whatever bizarre reason.

“So what’s the deal with your eye?” Grunkle Stan asked as soon as Dipper had finished that thought. 

“Terrible accident,” Bill said simply, tapping at his eyepatch. “Nearly lost them both. I don’t like to talk about it.”

"Your voice is kinda funny, too, now that I think about it. That from the accident as well?" Grunkle Stan pressed, as insensitive to social queues as Bill was himself. 

"Indirectly," Bill said with a startling grin. "I fried my voice box screaming."

That was enough to throw Grunkle Stan off his line of questioning as he made a face of discomfort, and then lapsed into a brief silence. Soon enough, he and Bill had started up again, this time brainstorming ideas for new attractions for the Mystery Shack. Bill suggested an inventive combination of a deer, an eagle, a crocodile and an octopus that practically made Grunkle Stan’s eyes light up with dollar signs. 

Dipper groaned, but he and Mabel’s nerves gradually eased over dinner as they realized that Bill didn’t seem about to unleash a plague of nightmares or rip his own heart out again to start a philosophical discussion.    

When dinner was over, Dipper pulled Bill aside and told him to meet him up in his room in a few minutes. Dipper's request practically begged to be answered with heavy innuendo, but his tone kept Bill from doing so. Instead, Bill waited a few minutes after Dipper had gone upstairs, and then vanished. 


	14. Providence

“So, Pine Tree, what’s on your mind?” Bill asked, appearing in a flash of blue light in front of the triangular window in Dipper’s room.  

Dipper, who had been sitting on his bed trying to appear much calmer than he felt, managed to only flinch at Bill’s sudden appearance rather than screech. “I’m surprised you have to ask.”

Bill shrugged. “Well, technically I don’t, but I’ve noticed that tends to be a touchy subject for you humans. I’ve been trying to cut back on the mind reading lately.”

“Oh,” Dipper said, surprised. “Uh, thanks.”

“So,” Bill said, “there are a couple of reasons I can think of that you’d invite me up to your room at night, and one of them’s really fun.” Well, Bill couldn’t pass up the opportunity entirely. “So which is it, kid?”

“ _Not_ that one,” Dipper said. At least, he thought, _not yet._

Slowly, Bill grinned. 

“You said you’d cut back on the mind reading!” Dipper accused, turning red as his own blood betrayed him.

“I didn’t say I’d stopped.”

“Okay, this isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dipper sighed. “I want to talk about something you _did_ say: that you would owe me a big favor if I helped you with your Mindscape problem.” 

“HAHA that’s not what I said, Pine Tree! I said I’d owe you a big one! Here, kid!” Bill clapped his hands together, and pulled them apart to reveal a large, three-dimensional replica of the numeral 1 on the dollar bill.

Dipper swiped the illusion away and started to storm off. (The thought that he was about to storm out of his own room had not yet occurred to him.) Even after all this, Bill was still just—

“Wait, kid!” Bill said, teleporting to stand in front of the door. “What do you want from me? Maybe I can agree to it.”

Dipper had known what he really wanted from the demon for a while now. If he got it, _then_ maybe he’d want more. “I want you to be honest. Just for one conversation, if it physically hurts you so much.”

Bill looked distinctly uncomfortable. 

Dipper made a difficult compromise then, but he feared that if he didn’t give a little, he would get nothing. “I promise I won’t ask about your long-term plans. There are just a few things I want to know.”

Bill narrowed his eye in suspicion. “Tell me what they are first.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever allowed anyone else that courtesy,” Dipper said. 

Bill laughed, but it was strained. “You’re harsh, kid. It’s kind of a turn-on.”

Dipper refused to let Bill’s diversions work on him this time. “What’s your answer, Bill? Do we have a deal?”

For a moment Bill looked _furious_. His eye even glowed red, and Dipper thought he was either about to simply vanish and never return, or, more likely, snap his fingers and engulf Dipper in a towering blue inferno.

But then his shoulders sagged a little, and his eye was its normal, anything-but-normal golden yellow again. “Do I get anything out of this deal?”

“Other than me and Mabel already saving your ass from oblivion today?” Dipper said, recovering from his fear-induced paralysis. 

Bill shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

“You might get me,” Dipper said. “Not my soul or my mind or my body, but my real friendship, and maybe more. If that’s something you want.”

Just a few weeks ago Bill would have said something flippant like “Why would I want anything from you that I couldn’t use?” and left, maybe giving Pine Tree a waking nightmare of his fingers turning into fish or something before he did. But now…

He held out his hand, and it ignited in blue flames. “Alright, kid, you got me. Deal.”

Dipper couldn't hide his look of surprise, but tried his damnedest to tamp down any traitorous feelings of disappointment. "I don't have to kiss you? ...Like last time?"

Bill's expression remained on-edge, but humor lit his eye. "Kid, I never said you had to kiss me last time, either. I may have implied it, but I was just messing with your head. How was I to know you would decide to take me seriously for once?"

Dipper, too shocked to do anything else, shook the demon’s hand dumbly, and withdrew to a safer distance in case Bill got buyer’s remorse. But Bill remained calm, watching him levelly.

Dipper had to fish to remember his first question. He cleared his throat. “Is there a Hell?” he finally asked. He had never been religious, but he believed in what he saw, and right now what he saw was a demon standing in front of him. He had been wondering about the repercussions of that since the day they’d met. 

“Whoa, you don’t pull punches, kid,” Bill said with a cough.

“I’m starting with the easy stuff.”

“ _Yeesh_ ,” Bill said, and then, alarmingly, he smiled. “Oh, you want to know if you’ll go there for consorting with a demon.” Of course, he put a suggestive emphasis on the word “consorting.”

It was pointless to lie to Bill – he would know. Besides, Dipper had made a deal for an honest conversation, and a conversation took two. “Yes, I do.”

Bill’s smile widened. “Kid, Hell’s just another dimension that happens to be the birthplace of all demons. Honestly, it’s boring. Just fire and brimstone all the time, and no one gets tortured there except for the demons who are too weak or too stupid to leave. I’m not going to clue you in on the secrets of life after death – you just gotta trust me that that stuff is for me to know and you to find out – but whatever happens, you’re not going _there_.”

That was an answer Dipper could accept. It was actually more than he had expected to get from the demon. “Okay, next question. Why did you thought-enslave Gravity Falls, and why did you let us go?”

Bill groaned, eye flicking to the window like he was considering jumping out of it. “Listen, Pine Tree. I’m immortal. What that means is—“

“I know what immortal means, humans aren’t as stupid as you think and I’m not a little kid anymore,” Dipper snapped.

“Oh, I _know_ you’re not, Pine Tree,” Bill said in a way that made Dipper’s blood heat just a little. “Now, what I was _going_ to say before I was so rudely interrupted, was that being immortal means I get bored very easily. When that happens, I look for something interesting to do – drive a man insane, plague a town with nightmares, get some dupe to build a portal to another dimension, that kind of totally nonspecific and hypothetical thing. Often, my ideas of a fun time are…shall we say ill-conceived? But nothing ever comes back to bite me, because I’m always the one doing the biting. Relax, Pine Tree, that was a metaphor.”

The thought had just _barely_ occurred to Dipper, and he was _going_ to keep his cool, but then Bill said something, and now he was blushing again. Bill probably knew all of this, and Dipper responded with a mental _‘fuck you’._ To which Bill replied, “Can’t it wait, Pine Tree? I’m trying to explain something.” And Dipper once again cursed his word choices and blushed harder. 

“Anyway, nothing ever bit me back until you did,” Bill continued with what was somehow discernibly a wink.  

“You’re doing this on purpose,” Dipper said.

“HAHAHA of course I am, kid! Now, back to the story. When I decided that having all of Gravity Falls under my thumb – well, more than I do already – would make my life a lot easier and be good fun to boot, there were no _physical_ consequences for me. I could keep you all that way until you naturally expired, or, more likely, until I accidentally killed you complicated little creatures while trying to keep you alive. But there were other consequences of a kind I’d never experienced before. I blame being around you humans for too long by the way, you must be contagious or something,” Bill said, crossing his arms with a huff. “But even though I could have anything I wanted from you, I was surprised and rather appalled to find that I wanted...something more. Especially from you, Pine Tree. And this wasn’t normal, demonic desire where I want something and I take it. I could fabricate it, but it wouldn’t really be the same. I wanted you to— _euuugh,_ I hate this word. Say it for me, Pine Tree. Starts with an ‘F’.”

Dipper raised his eyebrows (he couldn’t raise one like Bill could, but then again, maybe Bill was cheating behind the eyepatch).

Bill chuckled weakly. “You’ve got a dirty mind, kid. And I would know! The word I was looking for was _feel_ , Pine Tree. _Feelings_.” 

Bill looked as if he might physically retch. But he pulled himself together and smiled. “There, I said it. Feelings.” He paused for a moment, riding out the apparent wave of nausea, one gloved hand over his mouth. “You didn’t have them. And suddenly all you humans were just as boring as I was bored. And regarding you specifically, Pine Tree, _I felt_ things. Me! Things like regret.” Bill shivered, and Dipper got the feeling that he was confessing more than he had originally intended to. “I mean, you were so pathetic! You did whatever I told you to with no complaints where before you would curse my name to the heavens with such gusto, kid! I was more bored in Gravity Falls than I’d ever been, and that was when I realized that you humans are more interesting than I thought, as long as you _stay_ human, and for some stupid reason that includes _feelings_!” Bill actually did retch that time. “Anyway,” he panted, “that’s why I tried to undo what I did. Stupid, weak, _human_ regret.”

Dipper was floored. He had to sit back down on the bed. “Bill,” he said cautiously, “do you like me? Not as something interesting, but with…feelings? Do you have feelings for me?”

Bill groaned, long and drawn-out and sick-sounding. “You’re killing me, kid. You really wanna know?”

Did he? If Bill didn’t tell him one way or another, he could go on pretending, and seeing things where they didn’t exist. Just like a dream. He shook his head. “I do,” he said. 

“ _Fine_ , you sadist,” Bill spat. “Yes! I have feelings for you! They’re confusing, and they are _certainly_ not natural, and sometimes they actually hurt. But don’t let it go to your head, kid. No one is safe from me. I’m the master of the mind, and if I wanted to I could rip out all these feelings like the pesky little weeds they are!”

Dipper thought about that. “So that means you don’t want to?” He knew he was trying his luck and the demon’s patience, but he also knew that he had to see this through to the end. It was probably the only chance he would get. 

Bill actually bared his too-sharp teeth and growled like a cornered animal, and Dipper almost felt guilty. He was sure that Bill deserved worse than this for all that he had done in his life, but as far as Dipper could remember, towards him, Bill had been nothing but helpful, kind, fairly flirtatious, and incredibly annoying. He had _not_ been genuinely mean, or more manipulative than was to be expected, and he certainly hadn’t hurt Dipper, as Dipper felt he may be hurting Bill now. But Dipper did not retract his question. 

Bill’s animalistic growl broke into a more human noise of frustration, and finally, a heavy sigh. “I guess not, kid. How many more questions you got for me? I’m pretty sure you’re gonna break something at this rate.”

“Just one,” Dipper said, heart skipping. “Do you want me to fulfill my end of the bargain? Do you want me?”

Relief washed over Bill’s face, and he had never looked more human. Dipper was aware that, until this point, each of his questions had been harder for Bill than the last. This one should be easy. Yes or no.

“Jeez kid, how dense are you?” Bill said, and for a moment, Dipper’s heart sank. Until it soared. “Haven’t you been listening to me? Of course I want you! I rewrote _history_ because I wanted you!”

Dipper had never blushed more. “Conversation’s over,” he said quickly. 

Bill couldn’t have argued if he’d wanted to, because his arms were suddenly full of the fragile and strong, beautiful and deceptively average, idiotic and brilliant object of Bill’s stupid feelings, and his mouth was suddenly quite occupied. 

“I might’ve rather told you all my big plans, kid,” Bill said, once they drew apart a little. 

“Will you?” Dipper asked hopefully. 

“HAHA you wish, kid,” Bill said, almost his usual self again. “But I’ll tell you what. As a favor for a friend, I’ll wait until all your and your family’s descendants are dead before I get started.”

Dipper sighed. Sometimes the demon could be infuriatingly, well, indecipherable. But Dipper was a good code cracker, and at least Bill’s promise gave Dipper time to stop him. But somehow, Dipper suspected it might not come to that.

Dipper didn’t believe in providence. He could change anything. Even a nearly omnipotent dream demon’s mind. After all, he had done it before.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed my writing, you can commission a story from me here: http://urban-sorcerer.tumblr.com/commissions


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